Silvio Berlusconi, speaking on a live phone-in on one of his TV stations, accused the technocrat Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, of failing to reinvigorating the economy. Photograph: Tony Gentile/Reuters

If anyone doubted Silvio Berlusconi would launch an inflammatory, divisive election campaign, the three-time Italian prime minister did not disappoint on Tuesday, slamming Germany and the financial markets.

In a live phone-in on one of his TV stations, the 76-year-old media mogul said the austerity measures introduced by the technocrat prime minister, Mario Monti, had dragged Italy into recession rather than reinvigorating it and were "German-centric".

The spread – which uses the risk premium of Italian bonds over German bonds to measure confidence in Italy's economy – was a mere "trick" that had been used to "bring down" the government he led until November 2011.

"We never heard of it before, people have only been speaking of it in the past year and what does it matter?" he said.

Monti, who said at the weekend he would resign after Berlusconi pulled his parliamentary support, fought back, warning Italians not to believe in "magic solutions" to Italy's grinding recession. He also left the door open to standing in elections now expected in the second half of February.

Berlusconi has agreed to back Monti's 2013 budget, which is due to pass by Christmas, but the dissolving of parliament after that will kill a number of key Monti reforms, including the reduction of Italy's costly provincial governments and a law obliging the country to balance its yearly budget.

Berlusconi's vitriolic campaigning is linked to his need to attract votes he has lost, including Italians who now back anti-EU activist and comedian Beppe Grillo. Berlusconi must also reforge an alliance with the Northern League party, which fiercely opposed the Monti government.

His attacks on austerity may even attract some backers of Pier Luigi Bersani, the centre-left leader now top of the polls, who has stood by Monti.

"A significant aspect in Italy is that certain anti-globalisation and anti-euro arguments are shared by the left and the right," the leading daily Corriere della Sera said in an editorial on Tuesday.

Berlusconi may not win in February, but the region of Lombardy is seen as a key battleground on which he could stop Bersani winning a majority in the Italian senate.

Lombardy's legion of small business owners were once the backbone of Berlusconi's support but abandoned him after he failed to cut through red tape or untangle a legal system that makes any business dispute a nightmare.

Now, a year on, stung by Monti's new taxes and facing shrinking markets, they may be prepared to "hold their nose" and vote Berlusconi again, wrote La Stampa.

For his part, should Bersani need to find coalition allies to reach a majority, he may struggle to ally Nichi Vendola's leftwing party with centrist conservative Catholics, spanning the same distance on the political spectrum as the parties who crammed into Romano Prodi's raucous and disastrously divisive cabinet in 2006.